the bars of thy gates

This is not new.

We are entering a period of mourning today, those of us from Ashkenazi backgrounds. The Nine Days preceding the Fast of Tisha B’Av are held to be the saddest days in the Jewish year.  We recall the destruction of the Holy Temple over 2000 years ago. There are those who say that we could dial back our mourning, since, after all, we are back in our city. We won, they say.

So what’s the problem, as our 9 year-old grandson would say.

Jerusalem is embattled. The Muslim world keeps upping the score. Those monsters thought they would bring guns, not “just” knives, into the holiest place in Jerusalem, which we Jews are not allowed to enter, protected by our people, keeping the agreement made uncaringly by Moshe Dayan in ’68, that we would let the Wakf take care of the Temple Mount, keeping the status quo, complicating things forever…but then they killed their people instead, or at least not Jews. So they had to riot when metal detectors were put in, to make sure no one else would have to get killed.

And this is not the only case. Their leaders, their “religious” leaders, lead them in incitement. The muftis are bringing out old myths to rile them up. But this is not new. They have been doing this forever, using the people to go on public tantrums.

We have always had to protect what we love. But we need so much help. The world is not going to do that, so we need to do it ourselves.

King David knew that the only One we could depend on was the only One.